


give me fever

by kairiolette



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1529855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kairiolette/pseuds/kairiolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru comes down with a cold after staying out too long during a sun shower, Rin comes over to make him dinner, and they’re both generally embarrassing boyfriends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	give me fever

_The sun shower starts just as they reach Makoto’s house on their way home from a joint practice with Samezuka. Almost in unison, the whole crew yelps and rushes inside for cover, pulling their bags or jackets over their heads. Whoever had been closest to Haru, however, made the grave mistake of not grabbing him and dragging him along to the house because—Haru sighs happily, lifting his face to the pouring sky—so long as it’s raining, and there’s no distracting rumbles of thunder, Haru could stay out like this all night. The rain falls twice as hard in just seconds, sun still shining and Haru is sure there’s a rainbow somewhere, but he’s too busy basking pleasantly in the shower, like a cat in a spot of sun. He hears various voices coming from the other side of the glass door of Makoto’s house—one is Rei screaming out in warning to Haru:  “YOU’RE GOING TO CATCH A COLD!”, another is Kou wondering whether or not they should bring him inside, the next is Makoto telling her, with a fond chuckle, that physical force would be needed to get Haru in the house at this point. But all Haru hears, along with the pattering splash of each droplet against his skin, is Rin’s affectionate laugh, ringing loud and clear, and Haru thinks he could probably spend his life in this moment—_

—but the doorbell tears Haru from his memory. And does absolutely nothing for the throbbing headache he’s had since that sun shower. He figures, with a garbled sigh of relief, that it must be Makoto at the door, which means more of that mackerel dish his mother has been making for him—Makoto had quickly caught on to the fact that for the past few days, Haru couldn’t stand for long periods of time in front of his stove without getting irritatingly dizzy. As usual, Haru doesn’t go to the door but instead waits on his futon, listening impatiently for the creaking open of his front door and the consequent greeting and footsteps. The door finally does open, but the person who bounds in calling Haru’s name, two grocery bags in hand, isn’t Makoto. 

"Pathetic," Rin says in English through his bared teeth when he sees Haru cocooned in a fuzzy blanket, eyes even glassier than normal and face flushed. Scoffing at the expense of Haru, he swings the larger of the grocery bags up onto the counter of Haru’s kitchen.

"Rin," Haru tries his best not to sound weak though his throat still burns, and he lets his head fall back onto his pillow, "Don’t make my headache worse."

Rin ignores him, of course, and steps closer to dangle the smaller grocery bag toward Haru invitingly. Haru can just smell the mackerel, his stomach rumbles and he reaches toward Rin, who snatches his hand back quickly. 

"I stopped by Makoto’s house, his mom had this prepared for you," Rin says, a mischievous lilt to his voice, which worries Haru. At this point, he’s ready to start begging if it gets him his food; "I brought it for you because I want you to see me do this."

Rin doesn’t take his eyes off Haru as he steps to the garbage can in Haru’s kitchen, lifts the lid, and—

—upturns the bag, emptying its contents with a sickening squelch and a heartbreaking thump. Haru’s entire quivering body raises at least six more degrees in temperature.

"Rin," he sighs, exasperated and defeated but too sick and starving to do much about it all. He flips over to lay prostrate on the futon with his face buried in his pillow, "I never want to see you again."

Rin’s bright laugh isn’t exactly music to Haru’s ears, not this time.

"You’ll never get better eating just mackerel. You need your greens. That’s why," Haru hears the shuffling of plastic bags, the rolling opening of drawers. He shifts to see Rin has unloaded vegetables from the grocery bag on the counter and is tying on Haru’s apron, "I’m here to make you vegetable soup." 

Haru, wanting to be bitter about the loss of his mackerel, actually finds himself too hungry to care. As long as he’s getting food at the end of all this, and as long as Rin’s with him for the time being. He doesn’t even have the effort to tell Rin to be quiet when he starts absently humming some tune, so he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to will his headache away. The sharp stench of onion is already starting to smart at Haru’s senses as Rin chops it, and he can smell the freshness of all the other unnamable vegetables—his watering mouth has him this close to forgiving Rin for his horrible offense. Haru barely notices that Rin is speaking now; from the tone of his voice it sounds like he’s just blathering idly, as he does, but Haru grows weakly angry at himself that he can’t hang on to every word Rin is saying. Rin’s unintelligible speaking and his own hazy mind help Haru to lose track of time, and he may have even drifted off to sleep right then if a heavy weight hadn’t dropped beside him on the futon. 

"It should be ready in half an hour," Rin leans over him as Haru instinctively turns onto his back to face him. His eyelashes feel stuck together as he flutters them open when a cool, towel-dried hand brushes the sticky bangs off of his forehead. Rin bites his lip as he looks down at Haru, finally seeming to take pity on the ill.

"You’d make a good husband, Rin," Haru rasps, if only to see the consequent splutter and indignant glare from Rin. 

"Shut up," Rin pouts, "It’s your own fault that you need to be taken care of like a child." 

"I’m not a child," Haru weakly protests, but he leans into Rin’s hand like a cat as it strokes back his hair. Rin clicks his tongue.

"You sure acted like one during that sun shower the other day," he replies, and Haru is again flooded with pleasant memories from that moment. The water coming down at a perfect pressure, the droplets of water visible thanks to the unclouded sun, and from behind the glass of the door, Rin’s laughter. He doesn’t realize he’s sporting a reminiscent smile until Rin scoffs at it.

“‘It was worth it,’ that’s what you’re saying in your head, isn’t it?” Rin says proudly, and Haru thinks he’s getting better at that but he could stand to be a little less oblivious. Rin leans across Haru, pressing the palm of his hand into the futon on the other side of Haru’s shoulder, hovering over Haru. “Well, now that you’re sick we haven’t been able to swim together for the past few days! I don’t get you.”

Just the thought of not being able to swim makes Haru’s head hurt, and his eyes fall shut again. They open only when he hears Rin sigh, his cool fingers pushing back Haru’s bangs and his lips pressing against his forehead. The gesture sheds the guise of a temperature check when his lips linger, and at that proximity Haru can smell his shampoo and the faintest hint of chlorine. He supposes he has missed swimming with Rin, too, but no more than he usually does at any given time on a daily basis when he isn’t swimming with Rin. Maybe he has been too sick to dwell on it, or maybe he just knows Rin won’t be going anywhere any time soon—at least, nowhere Haru couldn’t follow. He curls his hands around Rin’s shoulders and only realizes he’s done it when Rin tries to pull away with a grin.

"Burning up," he laughs, then dips down to press a chaste kiss to Haru’s chapped, parted lips.  _That_  Haru has missed—given all the embarrassing, fever-driven dreams he has been having about Rin that leave him out-of-breath and uncomfortable. Still, he wrinkles his nose and recoils.

"You’re going to catch my cold," Haru warns, face flushed even hotter than before even as he cups Rin’s neck. Regardless, Rin kisses him again, then pulls back to straighten his shirt and scratch his head almost shyly.

"Not me," he says as he stands to head into the kitchen, where the timer has just started to go off, "I have an immune system of steel thanks to my varied diet." 

Rin noisily busies himself with preparing Haru’s meal, and Haru manages to sit up, swinging his feet to the ground.

"When you get sick I’m going to throw out everything you love," Haru mumbles loud enough for Rin to hear. Blanket wrapped around him like a shawl, he ambles dizzily into the kitchen, coming behind Rin to rest his heavy head on his shoulder. He itches to feel Rin’s cool fingers against his heated forehead again.

Rin immediately turns around and gathers Haru into his arms, looking at him with a too-serious expression. ”I don’t think you’d fit in my trash can.”

Haru mimics Rin and turns around away from him with an angry huff. ”Stop saying embarrassing things all the time,” he mumbles moodily, gripping Rin’s wrists at his waist.

"You’re the one who called me your husband!" Rin snaps, face burning red, then lets Haru go, "Go sit at the table, I’ll bring the soup over to you."

Haru hazily obeys, not proud of how he all but stumbles into the next room, grateful to plop down unceremoniously onto one of the cushions before his table. He leans forward to rest his burning cheek on the cool surface, however unsanitary that may be. Rin enters the room in no time, soup in hand.

Rin carefully sets the steaming bowl down before Haru along with a napkin, and Haru digs in before it can even cool down, the hot liquid somehow soothing to his scratchy throat. Rin probably laughs at him, but Haru’s too busy eating to listen. He does, however, find the effort to grab Rin’s wrist when he tries to return to the kitchen, to tug on it twice with a frown, wordlessly telling him to stay put. Rin complies with a scowl that would have passed as exasperated had he not smiled through it, and he settles down on the cushion beside Haru.

“What, you want me to feed it to you?” he teases, and Haru glares at him, pulling the bowl to his chest, because he wouldn’t put it past Rin. With each spoonful, Haru’s hunger dissipates and some strength returns.

“Good, huh,” Rin comments smugly from where he sits beside Haru, watching him unabashedly. Haru only offers him a glare as he takes another spoonful despite himself. When Haru finishes he’s surprisingly content, despite the abhorrent lack of mackerel, even content enough to lean into Rin when Rin scoots closer to him. He takes Rin’s hand in both of his to press the back of his knuckles against his warm face. 

“Tell me about swim practice,” he demands, his body and soul aching for so much as a cool splash of water, or a lap back and forth with Rin in the lane beside him. Now that he thinks about it, it  _has_  been a couple of days—a lifetime in his world.

“Same old, same old,” Rin responds, lips moving against Haru’s hair. Haru turns to look up at him, and Rin’s other hand comes up to tuck Haru’s hair behind his ear.

“Did you miss me?” Haru asks, and Rin flushes, averting his gaze with a pout. When the Iwatobi and Samezuka swim teams don’t have joint practices, Rin usually meets up with Haru and the others after his own practice to swim around a bit. 

“Don’t make me say it,” Rin growls moodily, and that’s as good an answer as any, Haru thinks. He’s about to lean in and return Rin’s previous kisses, this time with a newfound energy, when his nose betrays him:  he turns away from Rin to sneeze twice in a row. Sniffling and light-headed, he turns back around to drop his forehead against the crook of Rin’s neck.

“Don’t wipe your nose on me, Haru,” Rin warns, but with the palm of his hand he strokes up and down Haru’s back and across his shoulder blades. Rin then chuckles to himself; Haru can feel the vibrations from his throat. “Your obsession with water is damn near dangerous. I need a leash for you.”

“I’m not an anima—mmph,” Haru tries to protest, lifting his head to look at Rin, but Rin catches his lips in a kiss, and Haru doesn’t really mind being interrupted. Unlike before, Rin deepens the kiss like he’s hungry for it. He drives Haru backward until his back touches the floor, cradling Haru’s head with the palm of his hand before it can hit the ground, and Haru starts to think that swimming wasn’t what Rin missed the most. He slips his hands beneath the back of Rin’s tee as Rin lowers his weight onto him, pressing him into the floor and kissing him breathless, making up for a barren three days. When Rin breaks the kiss, panting, he momentarily rests his face against Haru’s neck, and Haru’s chest heaves with the weight of Rin’s body. 

“Who needs a leash?” he manages, and Rin pinches his side, lifting his head to kiss Haru again. Haru barely even notices when Rin hitches his thigh up so his leg hooks around Rin’s waist. Haru thinks, with a surprised grunt, that it’s an embarrassing position, but nonetheless it makes his face flush and his stomach flip and his fingers grapple at Rin’s bare waist.  

When they break apart again, Rin rests their foreheads together, gasping a very self-satisfied laugh that makes Haru want to kiss him again, if only to keep him quiet. His fingers tangle in Rin’s hair when Rin settles his head on Haru’s chest, Haru can feel his heart pounding against where Rin rests. 

“You really are going to get sick, Rin,” Haru says, though his thighs squeezing at either side of Rin’s torso and his hands in Rin’s hair keep him very much in place.

“You’d take care of me,” Rin says sleepily, bringing his hand back to cup around the back of Haru’s thigh, weakly tugging it upward again.

“Nitori can take care of you,” Haru says, smiling where Rin can’t see him, “I’ll throw out all your red meat.”

Rin swats feebly at his thigh and lifts himself up again to plant one on the corner of Haru’s mouth. He playfully tilts Haru’s head away from the ground a bit, fingers tightening in Haru’s hair.

“Do you think you’ll be in school Monday?” Rin asks against Haru’s lips, kissing him gently like he had earlier.

“Yes,” Haru says, and it’s really all he can say to Rin at this point, damn him.

“And practice?” Haru mm-hmms into the next kiss, and he fists Rin’s shirt to tug him closer.

“Do you have to leave?” Haru asks, pressing his lips to Rin’s jawline, his weakness, as if to persuade him to stay. 

“Y-yeah,” Rin replies, slipping his hand gently out from under Haru’s head. “It’s already dark out.”

Instead of pulling back completely, however, with a devious and childish laugh Rin tackles Haru back to the ground, eliciting embarrassing noises from the both of them as they land in a heap and as Rin presses sloppy kisses up Haru’s neck until he reaches his lips. But this final kiss has Haru pressing bruises into where his fingers grip Rin’s waist, his toes curling, thighs clamping tight around Rin’s hips, and briefly he feels as if his fever is coming back full force. Only after breaking the kiss does Rin start to untangle himself, Haru a puddle on the floor, and it’s just like Rin to leave him like this, all with a pleased grin on his face. Haru takes satisfaction in Rin’s wobbly knees as he stands, though, and he pushes himself into a sitting position.

Like an afterthought, Rin’s hand comes down to gently cup Haru’s chin, tilting it upward.

“Don’t take any long baths until you get better,” he warns, cheeks still red from what they had done. Haru frowns. “And don’t go digging in your garbage for that mackerel.”

“I won’t.” Haru wriggles his chin out of Rin’s hand. Rin grins, bending down one last time to kiss Haru’s cheek before turning to leave.

“I put the rest of the soup in your fridge, eat it tomorrow,” he says over his shoulder. Haru pulls his blanket around himself, over his lap.

“Text me when you get to your dorm,” he says, and Rin barks out a laugh from where he is already opening Haru’s front.

“Like you’ll answer!” he calls, and before shutting the door behind him:  “Feel better, Haru.”

His house is very silent after Rin’s departure, and to prevent Haru from thinking about how much better he already feels, he collects his empty bowl and brings it to the kitchen to heat up another helping of soup.


End file.
